We are 35,000 feet up, with a ground speed of 458mph. Something I hadn’t realized, which The Fruitbat told me, commercial jets operate close to the speed of sound. Up at cruising altitude, the thinner air makes this speed much slower than at sea level. We are on the north side of the plane and so can see the snow-covered peaks of Alaska’s long chain, shining into the cabin, sometimes to the grumpy stares of would-be sleepers.

The Lonely Planet guide’s section on the Thai character says, “In general, Thais place high value on sà-nùk, which means ‘fun.'” This seems auspicious to me. Meanwhile, I am writing notes to The Private Eye such as “Help! Where is my laptop! I am lost without it!” Besides perhaps simple local phones which we might buy, and a point-and-shoot camera, we decided to bring only one gadget, a first generation iPad. We used it as a Kindle to read the first quarter of The Hobbit together on our flight to Seattle.

Which was fitting, given we saw the movie Monday night with The Fruitbat. There and Back Again indeed! What a better a way to start our own adventure? Although in our case there are neither Istari scrawling sigils on our door, nor trolls planning to cook us. But we did have a great party before we left, admittedly with waffles rather than seed cakes, in which no plates were broken.

— The Professor